


Would it really kill you if we kissed?

by puppybusby



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Afterlife, Allison dies a lot, Character Death, Dialogue Heavy, F/F, Just Roll With It, Lydia is death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 17:24:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4795955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puppybusby/pseuds/puppybusby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Is this your burden Lydia?” Allison mutters as she opens her eyes slowly. “To be trapped with the cries of the dead?”</p><p>(Or: The five times Allison walked away from death and the one time she didn't)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Would it really kill you if we kissed?

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Drive" By Halsey
> 
> Okay so I've had the worst case of writers block the past two weeks you would not fucking believe, it's been awful BUT Halsey exists and Badlands is a great muse, seriously, listen to that album it's amazing. 
> 
> Long story short, this fic was inspired by the line I used for the title and I have no idea what was going through my head when I wrote it and hopefully it doesn't sound too awful but it's 4am and honestly I'm just glad I made words happen, so there's that. 
> 
> But I hope you enjoy it and I love you all!

 

**I**

 

Allison frowns as she walks into the room. The walls are so white it almost hurts her eyes to look at them for too long. She turns around to look the way she had come and found herself staring at the same bright wall.  
  
“Mom?” She called out. “...Dad?” She turned around and almost tripped over her own feet at the figure stood in front of her, even though she was a little way away.  
  
The girl stared her for a few moments before walking towards her, her black dress swaying with each step and bright red curls bouncing.

She scared her.  
  
“Who are you?” Allison asked quietly, ducking her head slightly.

When the girl reached her she stared down at her, she was so _tall._ Her heels helped. Allison's mom didn't want her to wear heels.

The girls face softened suddenly and she crouched so that they were level, Allison flinched and took another step back.  
  
“Who are _you?_ ” She asks, voice softer than Allison would have expected. “How old are you?”  
  
Her parents taught Allison how to be polite, so she didn't think twice when she took a deep breath, stood up straight and looked the girl in the eye.  
  
“My name is Allison Argent and I'm six years old.”  
  
The girl raised an eyebrow in the same way aunt Kate would whenever Allison said something that she thought was funny.  
  
“Six.” The girl stood up straight and took a step back. “That's very young.”  
  
Allison crossed her arms. “Where am I?”  
  
“What do you remember last?” The girl asked.  
  
Allison frowned. “I was eating dinner and my tummy hurt, mom said I was being dramatic and to stop complaining.” Her frown deepened at the memory. “I think I fell off of my chair.”  
  
The girl nodded. “Did it hurt a lot?”  
  
“It was like I was on fire.” Allison tilted her head to the side. “Who are you? Where am I?”  
  
“You're dreaming.” The girl replied. “But it's okay, you'll wake up soon.”

“This is a weird dream.”  
  
“Yes, it is, isn't it?”  
  
“When can I wake up?” Allison asked.  
  
“Soon. But you might hurt for a while.”

 

Allison pouted. That didn't sound fun.

 

 

 

**II**

 

“I didn't think I'd see you again so soon.”  
  
Allison opened her eyes, grimacing at the sterile walls, and pushed herself to her knees and recoiling at the dark red blood hitting the ground below her, it's almost poetic.  
  
Allison presses a hand to her shoulder and falls back to sit more comfortably as she seeks out the source of the voice, her gaze landing on a figure wearing a black dress that cuts well above the knee.  
  
A shadow of a memory rises to the surface, almost forgotten had it not been for years of dreams and drawings of the girl with the red hair covering her wall and it's been one hell of a day and this is just the icing on the proverbial cake so she can't help but laugh, a laugh that almost sounds hysteric as the red haired girl looks at her in confusion.  
  
“I'm sorry.” Allison laughs, pressing a hand to her shoulder, covering the source of the bleeding. “I think I'm losing my mind.”

The girl kneels beside her. “What happened?” She asks with genuine curiosity.  
  
Allison laughed again, definite sounding a little manic. “Well, it turns out that my boyfriend of the past couple months is a werewolf, a _werewolf._ Oh, and my family are hunters, as in they kill werewolves for a living and that's why we've been moving around so much and my aunt set fire to a house full of them years ago but obviously didn't kill them all because I shot one of them with my bow and arrow but I didn't want to kill them so she shot me and then someone else killed her and-” Allison snapped her mouth shut suddenly, realisation hitting her. “You're not a guardian angel.”  
  
“Guardian angel?”  
  
Allison scrambled to her feet, hand clutching her shoulder, she moved in a way that seemed to startled the girl, even if she didn't show it so obviously.  
  
“When I was a kid... My appendix ruptured, my parents didn't believe me when I told them I was in pain and I almost died.” Allison pointed a finger at the girl. “I remember you telling me this was a dream and when I woke up I was in hospital and I told my dad about you.”  
  
The girl nodded slowly. “And he told you I was a guardian angel.” She concluded.  
  
“I guess even werewolf hunters struggle to believe in an afterlife. Especially when death comes in the form of a girl who looks what, eighteen?”  
  
“Nineteen.”  
  
“Didn't know death had an age.” Allison replies stiffly.

They remained in silence for what felt like an eternity, hell, as far as Allison was concerned, time didn't even exist here. Wherever _here_ was.

 

“I'm dead, aren't I?” Allison eventually asks, her voice irritatingly small.

“Almost.” She replied, rising to her feet. Allison found that now, she was taller than death. “You have to come with me in order to truly die.”  
  
“So this is like a middle space.” Allison said.

“If that's the phrase you want to use.”  
  
“I'm not ready.” Allison took a step back. “I can't go yet.”  
  
The girl frowned. “Allison-”  
  
“No.” Allison shook her head. “I'm seventeen and I refuse to die.”  
  
Death looks at her, somehow managing to look amused and concerned and flat out pissed off all at once and Allison doesn't know if she can fight death, she'll sure as hell try, but she doesn't think it'll work.  
  
She sighs, and plants her hands on her hips. “Fine.” She says, and when Allison stares at her in confusion she waves her hand towards Allison. “What are you waiting for? Shoo.”  
  
Allison looks over her shoulder an back at the girl, even more confused. “Just.. Go?”  
  
“Go, Allison Argent. _Live._ ”

 

 

 

 **III**  
  
  
“For someone who was so insistent on living...” The girl notes with a tone of disdain. “You seem to be doing an awful lot of dying.”  
  
Allison stares up at the too familiar white ceiling, she doesn't move for a while, too busy pondering how something that is also nothing can feel soft yet hard at the same time.  
  
...It's best not to read into these things too much, she finds.  
  
“I don't remember what happened.” Allison says eventually.  
  
“You will. If you stay for long enough.”

 

Allison sits up, a dull pain ricocheting through her entire body. Death moved to stand beside her.  
  
“Do you have a name?” Allison asks. “You never told me and I don't particularly like referring to you as death.”

 

There was a moment of silence as she knelt beside Allison and she could feel the girls gaze burning into her skin.  
  
“You can call me Lydia.”  
  
Allison turned her head so that she could face her. “Lydia.”  
  
Lydia nodded, hazel eyes not leaving her own. “Is that a problem?”  
  
“Not at all.” Allison held her hands up in surrender. “I just wasn't expecting that.”  
  
Lydia smiled. “What were you expecting?”  
  
Allison grinned. “Who knows.”

 

“Allison...” Lydia sighed. “It's been six months, what happened?

 

“I-” Her smile fell. “My mother died.” She studied Lydia carefully. “But you knew that, didn't you?”  
  
Lydia glanced away, lips pursed and nodded.  
  
“Why?” Allison asked. “Why did you take her?”  
  
“I don't choose this Allison.”  
  
“Yes you do!” Allison got to her feet, despite her body's protests. “Twice. You've let me go twice, why didn't you let her go?”  
  
Lydia glared up at her. “Do you really think I'm supposed to let you leave? My job is to bring death. That is what I do, Allison. Your mother took her own life-”  
  
“Stop.” Allison growls.  
  
Lydia moved to stand. “She passed through here without pause.”  
  
“Stop it.”  
  
“I am death, Allison. You know that and this is what I do.”  
  
“Shut up!” Allison yells. shoving the girl.  
  
There were many things that surprised her about this. One, that she was even able to touch the girl. Two, she didn't crossover to whatever lay beyond Lydia's room and three, how utterly shocked and hurt Lydia actually looked.  
  
“I'm sorry that your mom died, Allison.” Lydia says quietly. “And I'm sorry you're hurting.”  
  
“I...” Allison cuts herself off. Lydia looks so honest, like she truly means what she's saying. She pushes her hands through her hair. “So much happened, I hurt so many people, so many people died and my grandfather was involved. My _grandfather._ Is there anybody good in my family?” She turns away from Lydia and uses the sleeve of her jacket to wipe at her eyes.  
  
She almost doesn't feel the hand on her shoulder.  
  
Almost.  
  
Allison meets Lydia's gaze again.  
  
“There's you.”  
  
“Since I turned seventeen I've almost killed five people, one of them twice.”  
  
“But you didn't, you stopped, their alive.”  
  
Allison smiled. “But I'm not.”

 

“Do you remember what happened yet?” Lydia asks.

 

Allison closes her eyes and is greeted with the fleeting image of her steering wheel, the sound of tires screeching clear in her ears and she frowns.  
  
“I crashed my car.” Allison groans. “Great, of all stupid fucking things I've done, I go and total my car.”  
  
It's only when she steps away does she realise Lydia's hand had still been on her shoulder.

 

“What happens to you when you let me go?” Allison asks.  
  
“That isn't your burden.”

 

Allison glanced down at the floor, a sudden feeling of guilt hitting her, it had to be bad, of course it did. Lydia was _death_. She was going against her very existence every time she let Allison leave.  
  
Lydia laughs suddenly, warm and comforting and everything it shouldn't be. “Go you silly human. Try not to get yourself killed.”  
  
Allison can't help but mimic her laugh, Lydia looks beautiful when she laughs, poets always talk of how there is beauty in death and God, if only they knew.  
  
She wishes she were good at poetry.

 

 

 

**IV**

“I wish you would change the décor.” Allison mumbles, the taste of blood still strong on her lips, the rain clings to her eyelashes but she leaves them be as she stares across at Lydia's approaching figure as she kneels before her.  
  
Lydia's hands on her face feels like coming home, soft, gentle touches as she brushes Allison's hair from her face, wipes the blood from where it drips persistently from the cut above her eye, she thinks she can see fear in those eyes.  
  
She almost laughs. Death, afraid. Who would've thought?  
  
“What have you gotten yourself into you silly hunter?” Lydia asks quietly.

 

Allison closes her eyes and finds herself leaning into the touch, oh so slightly. “Do you ever get lonely? Is it lonely here.”  
  
“Sometimes.” Lydia admits. “Not everybody who comes here is as calm to meet death as you.”

  
She feels Lydia's hand skim down to her neck, he shoulders, everywhere where she sees blood. It takes a while, there's a lot of it.  
  
“Is this your burden Lydia?” Allison mutters as she opens her eyes slowly. “To be trapped with the cries of the dead?”  
  
“In life and in death.” Lydia replies. Allison must make some expression of confusion because she smiles, eyes crinkling at the edges though there's a distinct level of sadness there that, if Allison had the strength, she would aim to ease. “I was a banshee, in life.”  
  
Allison nods, she's read the bestiary, memorised it in fact. “You know no peace from death.”  
  
“I am death.” Lydia reaches up to tuck a remaining curl behind Allison's ear. “What did you do, Allison? Hardly any time has passed.”  
  
She hardly has the energy to move, though she manages to grip Lydia's hand to still her movements.

 

So much has happened, and she tells Lydia this. She tells her of how she could no longer bear to be in that town, around the people she hurt, to look Scott in the eye. To be around her father and act as though they could live any form of a life together after all that has transpired.

  
She tells her of how she left, got on a bus with a backpack and her daggers and didn't look back.  
  
To be a hunter is a risky endeavour. Allison knew that but she persisted. How the weight of her legacy made her a target to both hunter and wolf alike.

 

She was alone in her travels and she found she liked it that way. Nobody seemed to bring her the same level of companionship she felt when she was with Lydia.  
  
“It was only a matter of time.” Allison finishes. “Though I do wish that it hadn't been by those hunters and certainly not in the rain like some Greek tragedy.”

 

“Of all the things to be concerned about, it's the weather.” Lydia mutters, sounding amused as she shakes her head.  
  
“I thought we'd established that I don't follow the conventional ways.” Allison replies.  
  
“That is true.” Lydia agrees. She looks thoughtful for a moment before she pushes on Allison's shoulders to get to her feet. “Can you stand?” She asks.  
  
Allison stares up at her and suddenly she feels like she's six years old again but as Lydia offers her hand, Allison finds herself grinning as she takes it and the pain almost feels like a distant memory as she's pulled upright.  
  
“How do you do it?” Allison asks.  
  
“Do what?”  
  
“Come with you.”  
  
Understanding flashes in Lydia's eyes, almost overshadowing the sadness that lingers.  
Lydia purses her lips. “I'm sure you're familiar with the term 'a kiss of death'?”  
  
Allison nods. “I am, so- Oh. Oh God, does that mean you kissed my mother?” Allison doesn't even want to think about that. It's almost worst than being beaten to death, and she's very familiar with _that_ feeling.

 

Lydia shoves her shoulder, almost playfully. “Not like that, you silly human.”  
  
“Then how?”  
  
“A kiss on the hand, cheek, forehead. Though most people end up just... Crossing.” Lydia sighs. “The kiss is a tradition, but many choose not to accept, for whatever reasons. Be it that they're too young to understand or out of a fear for the finality it brings.”  
  
“So what do you do then?”  
  
Lydia glances down at their linked hands, her thumb whisking over Allison's bruised and skinned knuckles. “I take their hand and I walk them to the end.”

 

Allison stares at their hands and waits. A lifetime could have passed in that moment and she would not have noticed.  
  
“Go home Allison.” Lydia says, dropping her hand. “Your father misses you.”

 

Allison frowns as Lydia drops her hand. “I don't understand.”  
  
“You don't have to understand.” Lydia replies, reaching up to cup Allison's cheek. “You just have to live.”

 

 

 

**V  
**

  
“Allison?”  
  
Lydia's voice sounds distant and terrified, so terrified and for the first time in hours Allison feels alive.  
  
The irony is not lost on her.

She's also aware that she's dripping water everywhere.  
  
Lydia's hands wrap around her arms and pull her up, a hand brushing through her soaking hair, fear and confusion in her eyes.  
  
“What's going on? What happened?”  
  
Allison shivers and presses herself closer towards Lydia. “I'm so fucking glad to see you.”  
  
“I don't understand.” Lydia says, though she tightens her hold on Allison regardless. “Why are you here?”  
  
“It's a sacrifice. Dad... He needed me.”  
  
“This wasn't what I meant when I sent you away.” Lydia mumbles.  
  
“Scott and Stiles did it too, our parents need them.” She lifts her head from Lydia's embrace and looks around. “Where are they?”  
  
“I don't know what you're talking about Allison.” She gently pushes Allison back so that they can see each other clearly. “What's going on?”  
  
“Me, Scott and Stiles are being surrogate sacrifices for our parents, we have people acting as our anchors so that we don't-” Allison trails off. “Oh.”  
  
Lydia looks like she could cry.  
  
Allison laughs. “If only you had been my anchor. God knows we know each other well enough.”  
  
“Maybe I still can be.” Lydia replies.  
  
“Lydia, no, you can't.” Allison shakes her head. “The price is too high.”  
  
“You don't even know what the price is.”  
  
“Exactly! I know it must big for you to not tell me.”  
  
Lydia cups the back of her head and it would be so easy, in this moment, to just lean forward and press their lips together, to end it. To stop walking the line between life and death. A life where she spends her time thinking of a girl who exists in a space separate from her own world, a girl who would quite literally be the death of her.

 

“That's my burden to bear.” Lydia replies.  
  
Allison stares at her. The urge to kiss her is still there, has been there since she was seventeen and Allison can hardly believe that in the space of a year she's been on the brink of death four times, that she's survived four times and it's all because of her own stubbornness and the girl in front of her.  
  
“Okay.” Allison agrees eventually.

 

Lydia nods, though she doesn't release Allison from her grip. “Allison, what is your burden?” She asks, too quietly for Allison's liking.  
  
Allison thinks for a moment. There are so many, so much weight on her shoulders that she now understands Atlas and the suffering of taking on a weight so vast.  
  
Still, a smirk finds its way to her lips.  
  
“My burden is my unhealthy obsession with death.”  
  
Lydia laughs and pushes her away. “Go, save your father you silly human.”  
  
Allison smiles fondly as she walks away. “Until next time, Lydia.” she says quietly.

 

 

  
  
**VI  
**  

She falls into warm arms, like this time... This time, she knew it was going to happen. A soft hand comes to press against her stomach and Allison lifts her head to meet Lydia's eyes, notes the tears finally falling.  
  
“I just wanted you to live.”  
  
Allison pulls herself upright, pulls Lydia into her arms and runs her fingers through her hair.  
  
“And I have, I did. Eighteen long years.”  
  
Lydia huffs a laugh. “Eighteen years is barely a second in terms of the universe.”  
  
“I love it when you get existential on me.”  
  
Lydia laughs again.  
  
“I'm not going back.” Allison mutters.  
  
That makes her stop. Lydia pulls away. “Allison-”  
  
Allison shrugs. “I can't keep doing it. The push and pull, the living my life with uncertainty of what happens to you whenever you send me away, I love you and that is something I didn't think to be possible. To have a love affair with death, to know how real and beautiful you are and to see these images of you as some great terror. As something to fear when I have not lived a day in my life fearing death.”  
  
Lydia's expression hardens. “If you got yourself killed just so that you could see me then-”  
  
“It's not like that.” Allison cuts her off. “Yes, I'm overjoyed to see you but that isn't why I did this, death was hardly my plan tonight but I can't fault what happened.” She takes Lydia's hands in her own. “I died for something good, Lydia. And It sounds so... Wrong, glorifying my own actions, I guess. But If there were a way to die, it would be like this. Not in hospital because of my parents neglect or my aunts fury or my own stupidity or from an act of revenge. I died for my friends, my death has given them the answer how to save them all and I wouldn't choose another way to go. I died for the people I love... And now I'm here. With the girl I love.”  
  
Lydia stared at her, unblinking for several moments. “Are you sure?”  
  
Allison held her hand out. “I'm sure.”  
  
Lydia brushed her hand aside and closed the distance between them, cupping Allison's face in her hands and pressing their lips together and Allison didn't know what to expect, she was kissing death after all, but all she felt was warmth, kindness and love.  
  
Allison wrapped an arm around Lydia's neck to keep her close.  
  
“You silly, _silly_ human.” Lydia mutters between kisses. “I love you so much, watching you leave-”  
  
“I'm here now.” Allison replies, pressing their foreheads together. “I'm here and I'm not leaving you again.”  
  
The tears are still falling from Lydia's eyes as she shakes her head. “Allison, you don't understand, you need to cross over.”  
  
“No I don't. I'm dead. You kissed me.”  
  
“Allison you need to cross over.”  
  
“Do you want me to?”  
  
Lydia looks offended that Allison would even suggest such a thing. “Of course not but-”  
  
“Then I'm not going anywhere.”  
  
Lydia sighs. “You're so stubborn.”  
  
Allison shrugs. “It's a skill.”  
  
“You really want to stay here?” Lydia gestures around her. “With me?”  
  
“As much as I loathe this room, you make it worth it, so yeah. I'm gonna stay with you.” Allison pulled Lydia closer. “I'll share your burdens. You're not alone any more.”  
  
Lydia looks at her fondly. “You're something else, Allison Argent.”  
  
“And don't I know it.” Allison mutters against her lips.  
  
The poets were right, there truly is beauty in death and Allison smiles knowing she gets to experience that beauty for as long as she knows.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
